Women's advocates hope to build on election momentum

Wednesday

Nov 14, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Buoyed by the election of the state's first female U.S. senator and the attention Elizabeth Warren's high-visibility campaign brought to gender issues, women's advocates are hoping to translate that momentum into greater legislative and policy victories.

STEVE DeCOSTA

Buoyed by the election of the state's first female U.S. senator and the attention Elizabeth Warren's high-visibility campaign brought to gender issues, women's advocates are hoping to translate that momentum into greater legislative and policy victories.

"Right now, with the recent focus on the electoral cycle on women voters and issues that pertain to women, it presents an opportunity where the state and the nation are listening to women and it will be important for ... elected leaders to keep that listening ear open," said Victoria A. Budson of Wellesley, chairwoman of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women and executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

"The momentum that has come through the campaign and will be visible in the folks that have been elected supports everything we have been working to do and that is to advocate on behalf of women and teach women to advocate on their own behalf," said Jean Fox, Freetown selectman and member of the Bristol County Commission on the Status of Women.

The election focus "underscores what we've already known as a commission: that women and girls are not uniformly or equally represented in areas of government or business."

The state commission collaborates "with other parts of the government in order to close gender gaps and to help improve the lives and capacities of women and girls throughout Massachusetts," Budson said.

Among its recent efforts, the commission is pushing for passage of bills to define comparable work, mandate paid sick leave, require equitable coverage in disability insurance and safeguard the housing rights of victims of domestic violence, all of which remain bogged down in legislative committee.

The less the involvement of women in policy and legislative decision, the greater the possibility of gender gaps, Budson said.

"When Social Security was designed, we had very few women serving in Congress. When the bill was written, there was an unintended consequence. It created a class of poor people and that was elderly white women, the largest group of poor people in the United States," Budson said.

She said while they "weren't poor in their working years and they didn't think they would be poor (in retirement)," the legislation's crafters "forgot that women lived longer, that we don't always have partners, that our jobs are less pensionable, that women change jobs more frequently than their male counterparts and that all these factors together add up to a safety net that was designed around a male working model."

Said Budson, "We need to finish cleaning up the gender bias in our bills and this is just one example."

She added that the commission's biggest achievement has been "amplifying the voices and the needs of women from all across the commonwealth, all regions, varied backgrounds, and helping to translate this into policy."

To continue that effort, the state commission will conduct one of its four annual public hearings from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Taunton Public Library, 12 Pleasant St.

In Bristol County, "We've articulated the areas that need legislative focus, that need policy focus, and obviously resource focus," Fox said. "Once those are articulated, it's a lot easier for the policy-makers and the legislators to say how are we going to construct a system that is supportive of women so that they're not a cost to society but they contribute to society.

"And that's what women want to do. They all want to contribute. There's not one woman we've talked to in all our travels who didn't want to leave her mark on life."

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